From Textile to AI - Who is Joseph-Marie Jacquard?

AI, binary codes, metaverse - complex jargons that would be dumbfounded if Joseph-Marie Charles aka Joseph Jacquard rose up from his grave and discovered the result of his machine - the Jacquard Loom. 

A failed businessman and a jack of many trades, how did Joseph Jacquard build a machine considered as one of the ancestors of our modern computer?

Who is Joseph Jacquard?

Born on July 7, 1752, Joseph-Marie Jacquard came from the city of Lyon to the family of Jean Charles and Antoinette Rive. His hometown of Lyon boasted a renowned silk industry. A result of investments by King Louis XIV's finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert more than a half a century ago.

He spent his early years providing child labor for many businesses, a common practice unfortunately in the 18th century. According to Alfred Barlow, Jacquard worked as early as 12-years old in a book binding shop, type-founding in a printer, and assisted in a cutlery business. With his parents invested in weaving, he joined it as well as a draw boy, one of the 4 assistants of a weaver. He skipped one job after another without attending school. He only learned to read with the help of his uncle as a teenager.

In 1772, Jacquard’s father passed away followed soon after by her mother. His parents luckily left him with a weaving business and lands. He took over the family weaving business and became regarded as a weaver by 1778. Being a land and business owner, it allowed him to marry Claudine Boichon, which cam with a generous dowry. 

After that, however, his life soured. Either a poor judge of character or a naïve investor, he fell to a scam and his business failed. The family went into debt and poverty. He spent the 1780s taking manual labor jobs, from a lime burner and finally a straw hat maker according to John Bowring in his interview with Jacquard.

By the 1790s, Jacquard found a calling that he and his son, Jean-Marie, hardly fought for: the French Revolution. The father and son tandem enlisted to the Revolutionary Army, joined in the defense of Lyon, and went to campaigns against the First Coalition. His son became wounded in Haguenau, resulting in both returning to Lyon. Despite being out in the field, Jacquard remained committed to his country in a different way.

French Revolutionaries fight the First Coalition's armies in the Battle of Valmy, 1792

Jacquard the Inventor

Jacquard later developed a reputation as a celebrity inventor akin to Nikola Tesla, Steve Jobs, and the annoying Elon Musk. He loved playing with machines, not to mention the potential for royalties and rewards that came with innovation. Nevertheless, besides wealth, dangers lurked in such ingenuity in the 18th and 19th century.

According to an 1866 Journal of Society of Arts, during his time in the cutlery business, Jacquard invented a machine that made knives that traditionally took 4 people. Instead of a sigh of relief and gratitude from the industry, workers said to have destroyed it fearing loss of their jobs. A sign of things to come with his loom design.

Jacquard’s mind went back into invention in the late 1790s driven by either passion or by money. Since 1775, France liked to reward remarkable inventors with rewards such as the case of the Montgolfier brothers and the hot air balloon. By the closing of the 18th century, according to John Bowring’s interview, Jacquard found a clipping of a reward for a loom that makes nets easier.

He went to work and made a design for a loom for nets, but he found the concept workable also for silk. Thus, in 1801, he made a prototype for a silk loom and presented it in the Exposition des Produits de L'industrie Française (Exhibition of Products of French Industry) in Paris. He won a Bronze medal.

The improvements in the loom never left Jacquard’s mind. He continued to work on his loom until 1804, when he unveiled and patented his final version of an improved loom aka Jacquard Loom. A loom that culminated his past experience as a draw boy, lover of mechanics, and studies and hard work of prior inventors.

Exhibition of Products of French Industry, the Louvre, 1801

Basics of Weaving 

Basic workings of weaving gives a better understanding of Jacquard's craft and appreciate his innovations.

 

Ask the question: what makes the fabric you wear? Zoom in and it will show a web of criss crossed threads or sometimes yarns. The vertical thread called warps and the horizontal thread called wefts criss cross in a process we now call weaving.

In a basic colored fabric, imagine warp 1, 3, 5, etc. goes up and the weft crosses under the raised threads. After the weft crosses, 1,3,5, etc. threads goes down and 2, 4, 6, goes up and the weft passes under these threads. The process goes on until a fabric forms.

For single colored fabrics, no problem in this process. But weaving fabrics with patterns levels up the process. It brought the question: what thread goes up and remains down for every pass of the weft? To assist weavers, draw boys, mostly children risk their fingers to raise the right threads. This is time consuming and labor intensive not to mention expensive for the salaries to be paid for 5 individuals. With his experience and observations as a draw boy and a weaver later, he added the study of prior developments in the loom to come up with his own set of improvements.

Developments on the Loom

Jacquard Loom emerged as the final product of decades of attempts to make the loom efficient. 3 inventors came to play with each having their own ideas which later Jacquard combined to make his own loom. This, however, opened some questions.

Ideas in developing the loom came as far back as 1725. Basile Bouchon, inspired by organs, used paper tape with holes to serve as a pattern for the needles and raise the needed wefts. This still called for assistants to place the paper tapes. His protege Jean-Baptiste Falcon changed from the paper punch cards into cardboard in 1728.

Jacques de Vaucanson

In 1745, a renowned inventor of automatas, today’s equivalent to robots, Jacques de Vaucanson utilized a cylinder that would roll the cardboards automatically to the loom and make it easier to create patterns. The loom still had drawbacks like the use of cardboard and its placement. Furthermore, his machine also faced a public backlash. A model remained in the Academy of Science in Paris. 

Jacquard drew inspiration and made improvements from Vaucanson’s loom. According to the 1866 Journal of the Society of Arts, while working as a mechanic after his 1801 exhibition, he encountered the Vaucanson loom in one of his repairs. Another account from the Abbott Payson Usher, Gabriel Dullieu, a member of the Council of Commerce of Lyon, sent Jacquard to Paris to investigate the loom.

Whatever the case, from Vauson’s loom Jacquard made improvements such as changing the cardboards into metal punch cards making it more durable. Before it required 5 individuals to weave patterned silk fabrics. With Jacquard’s loom, it took only 1.

Jacquard’s Loom

The loom became widely regarded as a descendant of the modern computer. A weaver equals a user and the maker of the plates as the encoder. The process begins with a weaver drawing or coloring on a grided paper the desired pattern. A special metalsmith then translates this drawing into a series of punch cards and sets its sequences. 

The punch card demonstrated an early use of binary code which moved the modern computer. In the binary code of computer, 0 and 1, the holes in the punch card which indicates the warp going up or not served for the Jacquard loom. With meticulous arrangement of holes in the cards and the arrangement of it resulted in lesser need of manpower to create an intricate and expensive patterned silk fabric.

1874 Engraving of the Jacquard Loom

Just like AI resulting in layoffs, Jacquard Looms did the same with the draw boys. Many books said that unemployed weavers and draw boys destroyed Jacquard looms. They even threatened the life of Jacquard himself. Some books dispute this, however, and argue that stories of attacks only came in later and not so much fuss arose from developed looms. Whatever the case, the loom became a boom.

Effects of the Loom

The Jacquard Loom stirred up controversy, a textile boom, and the popularity of its developer. The loom spread beyond Lyon and Jacquard himself became widely and highly regarded. This allowed Jacquard to live comfortably for the rest of his life.

In 1806, a court in Lyon declared the Jacquard Loom a public domain. In other words, free for all to make and copy Jacquard’s design without any need of paying royalties to Jacquard. The great Napoleon Bonaparte, however, saw it differently and reversed this ruling. Amazed by the technological advancement of the loom, he ordered a stipend of 3,000 Francs to Joseph Jacquard, half, however, goes to his wife. Moreover, Napoleon ordered royalties to be paid to the inventor.

By 1812, 11,000 Jacquard looms operated in France and most of them paid royalties to Jacquard, making him rich. Receiving the Legion of Honor medal endowed him with stipend from the state. It set him to a comfortable retirement outside Lyon taking interest in gardening.

On the other hand, his loom became a sought after device. Even France’s historical rival Great Britain wanted to get their hands on the Jacquard Loom. By 1817 or 1818, a British man named Stephen Wilson took a copy of the Jacquard Loom and patented it in London as a “reading in machine.” By 1820, Francis Lambert patented a version of Jacquard Loom for gold and silver laces. 

1820s saw massive growth in the number of Jacquard looms in England especially. Surprisingly, it allowed France’s rival to manufacture large quantities of cotton fabrics with patterns By the 1830s around 7,000 and 8,000 Jacquard Looms supported the British textile industry, especially the center of Manchester. 

Besides boosting industries, the fundamentals that operated the Jacquard loom, most importantly of the binary code, inspired one English mathematician. Charles Babbage took this concept and applied in his design of his Analytical and Difference Engine, both in design displays complex calculation and a leap into the development of the modern computer.

Charles Babbage, 1860

Summing Up

The story of Joseph-Marie Jacquard, the Jacquard Loom, and its operation offers a lot of lessons. It tells how progress builds up from past developments, drawing inspiration from ideas of the old to answer plaguing problems. Moreover, taking fundamental concepts from 1 invention may inspire solutions to other fields.

Just as the case of the Jacquard Loom, the machine helped an entire industry. The principle that operates it, however, inspired other fields. Hence, the innovative loom contributed to the development of modern computers. From the textile industry, the Jacquard Loom set the path of humanity towards digitalization.

See also:

The Industrial Revolution of France

Who is Richard Arkwright?

Bibliography:

Books:

Barlow, Alfred. The History and Principles of Weaving by Hand and by Power. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1878.

Mokyr, Joel. Twenty-Five Centuries of Technological Change: An Historical Survey. London: Routledge, 2001.  

Usher, Abbott Payson. A History of Mechanical Inventions. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1954.

General Reference:

Federico, Giovanni. “Jacquard, Joseph-Marie.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, Volume 1. Edited by Joel Mokyr. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Websites:

"Joseph Marie Jacquard." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Encyclopedia.com. Accessed on March 14, 2024. URL: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/joseph-marie-jacquard 

"Joseph Marie Jacquard." Science and Its Times: Understanding the Social Significance of Scientific Discovery. Encyclopedia.com. Accessed on March 14, 2024. URL:  https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/joseph-marie-jacquard

"Joseph Marie Jacquard." All on Robots. Accessed on March 15, 2024. URL: https://allonrobots.com/joseph-marie-jacquard/

"Programming Patterns: The Story of the Jacquard Loom." Science Industry Museum. Accessed on March 15, 2024. URL: https://www.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/jacquard-loom

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Joseph-Marie Jacquard." Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed on March 15, 2024. URL: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Marie-Jacquard.

_____________________________________. "Jacquard loom." Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed on March 15, 2024. URL: https://www.britannica.com/technology/Jacquard-loom.